4 ms·

The single most terrible thing about Slack is the hostage holding of message archives. You don’t pay? Fine...you get 10k message history, no ability to set rete

The single most terrible thing about Slack is the hostage holding of message archives. You don’t pay? Fine...you get 10k message history, no ability to set retention and Slack still stores all those messages forever, taunting me that they have it all and won’t let me do anything with them. That’s just user hostile. If I don’t pay, I shouldn’t have all that message history stored forever. Either let me set retention on my messages or delete anything over 10k automatically. Don’t hold my content hostage and make it completely inaccessible and un-deletable unless I pay.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
OTOH... you really don't have much of a say if you're on a free plan. You're free to leave if you don't like their conditions for the free plan.
jmkni 7y ago
I worked on a project a while ago that used this as a feature. They were worried about a Freedom of Information request for chat archives (UK Govt linked) so intentionally didn't pay for Slack, so most of the message history wasn't available if a request came through.
- gruez 7y ago
  >intentionally didn't pay for Slack, so most of the message history wasn't available if a request came through. I'm pretty sure that won't work. They keep the logs regardless of whether you pay. It's not like if you don't pay for it, they erase your messages starting at 10k. You can't see it, but upon paying for slack premium, you'll immediately get access to them.
- tomrod 7y ago
  That seems like a huge red flag?
gtsteve 7y ago
It was sort of helpful for us. We (a bootstrapped small business) remained on the free tier for a few years before upgrading and getting access to all history. We might not have bothered if the history was simply deleted. I was grateful they didn't as there are some great moments in there, i.e. our first invoice, announcement of our first member of staff, prototype renders, etc.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

OTOH... you really don't have much of a say if you're on a free plan. You're free to leave if you don't like their conditions for the free plan.

jmkni 7y ago

I worked on a project a while ago that used this as a feature. They were worried about a Freedom of Information request for chat archives (UK Govt linked) so intentionally didn't pay for Slack, so most of the message history wasn't available if a request came through.

gruez 7y ago
>intentionally didn't pay for Slack, so most of the message history wasn't available if a request came through. I'm pretty sure that won't work. They keep the logs regardless of whether you pay. It's not like if you don't pay for it, they erase your messages starting at 10k. You can't see it, but upon paying for slack premium, you'll immediately get access to them.
tomrod 7y ago
That seems like a huge red flag?

gtsteve 7y ago

It was sort of helpful for us. We (a bootstrapped small business) remained on the free tier for a few years before upgrading and getting access to all history. We might not have bothered if the history was simply deleted. I was grateful they didn't as there are some great moments in there, i.e. our first invoice, announcement of our first member of staff, prototype renders, etc.